On 4 November an Italian judge convicted 23 CIA agents and two Italian agents for their role in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric. Milan judge Oscar Magi sentenced former Milan CIA station chief Bob Seldon Lady to 8 years in prison, and 22 other agents to 5 years for their role in the abduction of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. Italian Air Force Colonel Joseph Romano , who was responsible for the CIA kidnapping team’s flight to Egypt from a U.S. air base in Italy was also convicted.

The Wall Street Journal of Nov 5th called the decision "a landmark ruling on the controversial [illegal] U.S. practice of abducting [kidnapping] suspected terrorists and flying them to other countries for interrogation [torture]".

On Sunday 9th Nov, a group of 15 peace activists marked the World March for Peace and Non-Violence at Shannon by marching from the Town Centre to the airport entrance. At the same time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of a state that stands accused of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, sat on the airport tarmac as his plane was being refuelled. And in between, up to 20 Gardai blocked the peace marchers from getting within a mile of the airport terminal.

September saw another busy month of military activity at Shannon. There were over 100 landings by Omni Air International planes, which is the airline chartered to carry US troops to and from Iraq. This is an average of more than 3 a day, and is a significant increase on the traffic in previous months.

There was a busy weekend of activism at Shannon on 26th and 27th September (2009). A women's peace group spent 24 hours at the airport engaged in a KNIT-IN for Peace, and keeping a close watch on the transit of the warplanes through the airport. Separately, three men in a boat launched Peace and anti-Lisbon signs on a raft in the Shannon Estuary Lagoon in front of the airport. All the while the airport seemed more like a military base that a civilian airport.

On Saturday 5th Sept there were at least two containers marked as property of the RAF beside a chartered Omni Air International plane at Shannon. They sat amongst the other containers, most of which were marked as Omni Air cargo. But the labels were clear: they said Royal Air Force. In other words, it seems that British military cargo is being transported through Shannon.

One of the containers that sat near the Omni Air plane was marked "Property of RAF Brize Norton". RAF Brize Norton is the home of the RAF's strategic air transport (AT) and air-to-air refueling (AAR) forces. It is the most important British military base for maintaining the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and is the main transport base for sending troops and supplies in and out of these occupied countries.